BORAGE FAMILY 



343 



pedicels in long, slender, leafless clusters, with a solitary flower 

 some distance below them in the axil of the uppermost leaf; 

 calyx with hooked bristles. — Dry banks ; common. On its first 

 appearance, in April, the flowers are buried among the leaves ; 

 but the stems finally lengthen into racemes, and as the season 

 advances the whole plant dries up and disappears. — Fl. April- 

 July. Annual. 



8. M. versicolor (Parti- 

 coloured Scorpion-grass). — 

 A very distinct species, less 

 than a foot high ; stem 

 leafy below, naked above ; 

 leaves sessile, linear-oblong, 

 sub - acute ; flowers very 

 minute, in clusters, on long, 

 leafless stalks, tightly coiled 

 up, when in bud, in the 

 scorpioid manner which 

 gives these plants the name 

 of Scorpion-grass, at first 

 pale yellow, afterwards 

 blue. — Fields and banks ; 

 common. — Fl. April — June. 

 Annual. 



IO. LlTH O SPERMUM 



(Gromwell). — Herbs, some- 

 times shrubby, with flowers 

 in leafy clusters ; calyx 

 deeply 5-cleft ; corolla 

 funnel - shaped, its throat 

 naked, or with 5 minute 

 scales j stamens included ; 

 nutlets stony. (Name from 

 the Greek lithos, a stone, sperma seed, from its hard nutlets.) 



1. L. purpureo-cceruleum (Purple Gromwell), with prostrate, 

 barren stems, and erect flowering ones, 1 — 2 feet high, with large, 

 bright, blue-purple flowers, occurs rarely in woods on chalky or 

 limestone soil, chiefly in the south. — Fl. May — July. Perennial. ^ 



2. L. officinale (Common Gromwell, or Grey Millet). — Dis- 

 tinguished by its erect stems, 1 — 3 feet high, much branched 

 towards the summit, and generally growing 5 or 6 from the same 

 root ; oblong, acute, sessile leaves, bristly above, hairy beneath ; 

 small yellowish white flowers ; and, above all, by its highly polished 



lithosp£rmum officinale 

 (Common Gromwell, or Grey Millet). 



